10 'persons of interest' in Janelle's murder to be named tomorrow

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Since the rainy Sunday two years ago when someone dumped Janelle Patton's battered and bloody body at a grassy lookout over one of their northern bays, Norfolk Islanders have wanted action.

An arrest of the killer, a trial and a conviction, and the islanders could move on from Norfolk's first murder in 153 years.

After all, the police had the murderer's name - on a list of 680 tourists and 1778 locals "on island" the day Ms Patton struggled mightily, but failed to resist a rain of knife and fist blows.

Tomorrow, 26 months after the Sydney woman's death delivered the tourist haven a nasty reminder of its dark convict past, the locals will get their action.

Detective Sergeant Bob Peters, a Canberra-based Federal Police homicide investigator, will step into a 19th-century courtroom and do the equivalent of rolling a hand grenade up a church aisle.

In a 220-page report of his investigation into the 29-year-old woman's death, Sergeant Peters will name 10 "persons of interest" to the police.

Among them are members of some of the island's famous families, descendants of the HMS Bounty crew led by Fletcher Christian into the most famous naval mutiny in modern history. Their names have fuelled the island rumour mill for two years.

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As islander Steven Robertson said: "Australia has AFL, we have gossip."

But uttered officially for the first time in a courtroom, it will cause a stir among the islanders whose historical undercurrents are little understood by foreigners, including "TPs" as Ms Patton, a temporary resident, was.

Intense interest is focused on the hearing, to be conducted in an 1832 sandstone military barrack hung with portraits of island monarchs King George VI, Queen Victoria and Queen Mary.

It dates from the island's second convict settlement, when, said Governor Ralph Darling, it was "a place of extremist punishment, short of death". Norfolk's first post-convict era murder inquest is proceeding at a busy time for tourists and locals on the five by eight-kilometre island, 1600 kilometres north-east of Sydney.

The hearing is sandwiched between a country music festival and Bounty Day - when the families celebrate the arrival of their forebears from Pitcairn Island on June 8, 1790.

Chief Magistrate Ron Cahill will act as coroner with Norfolk's Crown counsel Graham Rhead assisting. Ms Patton's parents, Ron and Carolyn, will be at the bar table and six witnesses will give testimony before a public gallery and a phalanx of media.

Sergeant Peters is the "softly softly" federal police officer whose 17 low-key investigative trips to Norfolk have earned him the scorn of some islanders.

He believes his statement "will put to rest the rumours".

"The community needs to know what has happened so far and where things are going, although it's not going to bring Janelle Patton back," he said.

Mr Rhead, a former Brisbane barrister and Hong Kong prosecutor, is hoping the uncertainty caused by naming people of interest will draw people forward.

He said: "It will cause some grief and stir it up. It was a pretty vicious murder and I hope those details will encourage people to speak up."

Locals are famously defensive, secretive and resentful of intrusion. Nevertheless as suspicion lingers (one theory has islanders carrying out a group slaying of Ms Patton), the islanders question why police did not jump in, jackboots and all.

The victim was found on the afternoon of Easter Sunday, March 31, 2002, wrapped in plastic at Cockpit Reserve, when she might easily have disappeared forever off a sheer island cliff.

Her body was slashed with stab wounds and she had sustained broken bones in a fierce struggle.

Police chartered a plane to fly in a coroner and crime scene examiners, but night on the island, where there was only one street light, had enveloped the scene.

"Why didn't they have a whole planeload of police here?" asked Candice Nobbs.

"They allowed the rescue team to go down to Cockpit Reserve and walk all over it.

"Why didn't they tell the Norfolk Island public straight away it was a murder?"

Another islander asked: "Why did they take four weeks to send out a questionnaire asking where we were that day?

"They could have rounded up all our trucks and put them in the oval the next afternoon."

Laurie "Bucket" Quintal, who ended a six-month relationship with Ms Patton eight weeks before her death, was one of the first to submit himself for fingerprinting when the island's Legislative Assembly passed legislation to help the police investigation.

The Pitcairner families, the Christians, Buffets, Quintals, Adamses, McCoys, Nobbs and Evanses, came forward, although only two-thirds of the island did.

Mr Quintal, like another former boyfriend, Steve Borg, noted that Patton was enduring considerable mental stress before her death.

He had an argument in the RSL Club with another man, whose name is on Sergeant Peters's list.

"I've told the police. I've always been co-operative, but it's frustrating," Mr Quintal said. "When I broke off the relationship with Janelle, it was amicable. I still miss her. She was a good girl, a normal, healthy young Australian woman. She had a big future."

The inquest will continue for three days. Some predict it will spark more rumour.

Most of the media coverage, barring the nightly ABC-TV report, will not reach the island, or will do so days late.